psychology in movement
7+ senses
Exploring Sensory Awareness as the Foundation for Emotional Resilience
Erasmus+ training course
11. - 19. June 2025
Slovenia
7+ senses
is 7-day Erasmus+ Training Course designed to deepen our understanding of
sensory awareness as a tool for resilience, connection, and well-being.
Through somatic work, dance and voice improvisation and ecopsychology, we will explore the expanded senses, beyond the traditional five and refine their ability to attune to ourselves, others, and nature.
By integrating practices of deep listening, presence, and embodied awareness, this training supports the development of skills for emotional resiliance and sensory intelligence in times of change.
This project explores how to cultivate a more connected, responsive, and resilient society, where individuals develop the skills to navigate uncertainty with greater ease and adaptability.
If you want to join this training, send us your application.
By refining our ability to sense and respond,
we enlarge our capacity for deep listening, reciprocity, and attunement. By this we are inviting a more welcoming, rooted, and present way of being.
With ourselves and with the world around us.
About this training
What if we have more than just five senses?
What if our capacity to feel, perceive, and relate extends beyond vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, into a vast, interconnected web of awareness?
In this training, we will explore the many senses that shape our relationship with the world, from proprioception (the sense of our body's position) and interoception (the sense of our inner state) to the subtle, often unrecognized ways we attune to the natural world around us.
The topic of this Erasmus+ training course could be framed around attunement (to oneself, to others, and to nature), through expanded sensory awareness.
WHY this topic?
In a fast-paced, overstimulating world, we often lose touch with ourselves, disconnect from others, and feel separate from the natural world.
What if we could cultivate a deeper sense of connection through our senses, learning to listen more fully, feel more deeply, and relate more authentically?
Through expanded sensory awareness practices, we are building sensory intelligence, the ability to tune in and respond to the full range of sensory experiences beyond the basic five senses. This heightened awareness allows us to more effectively attune to ourselves, others, and the environment around us. By practicing expanded sensory awareness, we are not only improving our attunement but also enlarging our overall capacity for connection, which is a vital skill for personal development, effective communication, and supporting a deep sense of belonging within the larger web of life.
Why else working with senses is important?
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Developing Sensory Intelligence:
By consciously expanding our sensory awareness (e.g., paying attention to proprioception, interoception, and environmental cues), we become more attuned to the subtler aspects of our experience. This helps us recognize feelings, physical states, and emotional shifts in ourselves and others more clearly. Sensory intelligence is about becoming more aware of the nuances of our surroundings, whether it's the mood in a room, the shifts in nature, or how our body responds to different stimuli. -
Attuning to Ourselves:
Sensory intelligence helps us build a deeper connection with our inner state: our emotions, physical sensations, and mental processes. This means we can identify when we're stressed, calm, hungry, or tired, and then respond accordingly to meet our needs. By attuning to our body and emotions, we can improve emotional regulation, resilience, and well-being. -
Attuning to Others:
Engaging the senses and deepening connection with the environment activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which counteracts stress and anxiety. Also, sensory intelligence improves relational awareness, making us more attuned to the emotions, needs, and non-verbal cues of others. -
Nature-based sensory engagement has been shown to lower cortisol levels, reduce anxiety, and improve mood stability.
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By exploring expanded sensory awareness, we challenge habitual ways of perceiving and interpreting the world. This opens new possibilities for creativity, intuition, and problem-solving in personal and professional life.
Main questions of this training:
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What are the 7+ senses, and how do they shape our perception?
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How do sensations influence our relational field and capacity for connection?
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How can we use our senses to cultivate a felt sense of belonging within nature?
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What practices can help us expand our awareness and listen more deeply to ourselves and the world?
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How does an ecosomatic approach help us shift from individual presence to relational presence?
Methodology:
Somatics - Dance & Voice improvisation - Ecopsychology
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Somatic practices focus on increasing awareness of bodily sensations, movements, and patterns to improve overall well-being and self-awareness. This work emphasizes the body's internal physical perception and experience. By tuning into how we feel and move, we can better understand our emotional and physical states, allowing us to regulate stress and emotions more effectively. This mindfulness of the body supports stress reduction, releases tension, and calms the nervous system, refining emotional resilience.
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Dance and Voice Improvisation is a spontaneous and intuitive practice where movement and vocal expression emerge in the moment, without a predetermined structure. It allows mover to explore their physicality, emotions, and creativity while responding to various stimuli such as rhythm, breath, sound, and space.
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Ecopsychology explores the relationship between human beings and the natural world through ecological and psychological principles. It seeks to understand and address the psychological underpinnings of environmental issues, proposing that the health of the planet is intrinsically linked to human mental health. It emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with nature to foster emotional well-being and a sense of ecological responsibility.
Objectives:
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Personal Growth & Self-Awareness – Develop a deeper connection to your body, emotions, and inner landscape through attunement and sensory intelligence. Explore how expanded sensory awareness can improve resilience, strengthen self-trust, and overall well-being.
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Interpersonal & Community Connection: Strengthen attunement to others by nurturing empathy, deep listening, and empathic, attuned communication. Explore how expanded sensory awareness can support meaningful connections, cooperation, and the creation of more inclusive and supportive communities.
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Professional & Facilitation Skills: Gain practical, body-based tools to improve your work as a facilitator, educator, or mentor. Explore how integrating sensory intelligence and emotional resilience can empower the youth and communities you work with, helping them navigate challenges with greater adaptability and self-awareness.
Glossary of our training
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Emotional resilience is the ability to adapt, regulate emotions, and recover from stress or challenges. It is deeply connected to attunement, expanded sensory awareness, and sensory intelligence, because our ability to sense, interpret, and respond to bodily and environmental cues affects how we process emotions and navigate difficult situations.
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Expanded sensory awareness refers to the ability to perceive, feel, and attune to the world in ways that go beyond the traditional five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). It includes additional sensory capacities that shape our experience of reality, deepen our connection with ourselves and others, and enhance our relationship with nature.
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Sensory Intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to sensory information in a way that enhances self-awareness, emotional regulation, relationships, and decision-making. It involves understanding how our senses shape our perception, behavior, and interactions with the world.
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Attunement is the ability to be deeply present, responsive, and in harmony with oneself, others, and the environment. It involves fine-tuning our awareness to subtle shifts in emotions, body sensations, non-verbal cues, and natural rhythms. Attunement allows us to move beyond surface-level perception and develop a more intuitive, embodied, and relational way of experiencing the world.
Who can apply?
This training is open to youth workers, educators, facilitators, mental health workers and anyone interested in personal growth, ecological awareness, and embodied learning. No prior experience is required, just an openness to explore and engage deeply.
Participants will be invited to:
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Challenge themselves to explore and understand the interconnected nature of sensory awareness, attunement, and embodiment through the practices offered.
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Discover the hidden potential of the body through somatic exploration, movement, and deep listening to both inner and outer landscapes.
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Trust the unfolding wisdom of the group process, co-creating a space of shared learning, presence, and connection.
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Engage in outdoor experiences, embracing physical activities in nature, regardless of the weather.
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Gather new tools and inspirations to integrate into their personal practice, facilitation, and work within their communities.
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Be willing to contribute the learned knowledge to their coworkers and apply the skills in their work with youth or other client groups.
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Commit fully to the program with openness, curiosity, and adaptability, embracing both personal and collective transformation.
We aim to have 27 participants from Slovenia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Romania.
Participants must be over 18 years old and have a communicative level in English so that they can participate fully in the program.
This training course is funded through the Erasmus+ Programme, travel costs up to a specific maximum allowed amount will be fully reimbursed.
Slovenia: 28 EUR (56 EUR for Green Travel*)
Italy: 211 EUR (285 EUR for GT*)
Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, France, Poland: 309 EUR (417 EUR for GT)
Important notice before applying:
The training course is open to people of all ages and experience levels. However, being open and interested in investigating this approach is important. We expect you to participate in the whole program. It means coming later or leaving earlier is not possible.
Also, prepare for an intensive experience with at least 6 hours
of physical activities every day!
Our work primarily centres around somatic movement practices, Contact Improvisation principles. Participants must be comfortable with giving and receiving touch as a means of learning.
Clarification on Training Purpose:
Please note that this training is not meant to replace psychotherapy or serve as a method of healing. Instead, it provides a learning opportunity for individuals to gain a better understanding and experience which they can later share.
Meet the team
Foto by: Laura Szekeres
Neža is an artist, working as a freelance contemporary dancer and choreographer. Her artistic work is mainly focused on improvisational practices that include both the body and the voice. She is also interested in the therapeutic effects of the voice and the connective power of collaborative vocal-movement improvisation. She facilitates Intuitive singing workshops to invite people on a playful journey of reconnecting with their own voices.
"Self-organising systems in nature inspire me. How attuned the birds are, murmuring through the sky as one body, which is a result of careful mutual observation and cooperation. How attuned are the ants, which actually have no leader or a predetermined plan according to which they would organise themselves so efficiently in any of the tasks they perform. Their organisation is based purely on local interactions.
For me, collaborative vocal and movement improvisation is a practice through which I come closer to nature's experience of self-organisation and expanded sensory awareness."
Živa is an anthropologist, manual therapist and researcher of somatic practices and contact improvisation.
Her field of activity focuses primarily on developing and maintaining sensitivity and awareness towards oneself, fellow human beings and the environment, finding organic, creative and non-violent ways for the coexistence of differences and their mutual enrichment, which enables continuous transformation and personal growth.
She uses work with the body, touch and awareness of space as the basic tools of her practices.
"How does it feel to rest in not knowing?
To sense weight settling, air shifting, skin tingling in anticipation.
Breath expands. Feet listen.
Readiness is not control but sensation—
a pulse, a shiver, the silent hum between us.
Stars and galaxies move through this body,
shaping the dance before thought names it.
Gravity guides, momentum carries, stillness speaks.
Again, I return to the vastness of unknowing.
Here, the next movement unfolds—
not forced, but felt.
I come to know myself through you,
through warmth, weight, breath.
Touched by the raw truth of emergence,
somewhere between earth and sky,
between the pause before me and the echo after you."
Nayeli is a psychologist working privately as a therapist with a Gestalt experiential psychotherapy approach. She has been a trainer in the field of non-formal education for more than 15 years. In the somatic and dance field, she is deeply inspired by contact improvisation, which has shaped her exploration of movement and its somatic approach beyond the dance studio. Having been actively engaged in the practice since 2017, she continues to investigate how this form expands her view on life.
"Nature is for me a very precious teacher.
It seems motionless yet it is in constant movement and continuation. So I wonder how, us humans, can become a part of this system, by deeply and sensibly listening to what is already there, what is already moving in its own way.
How can we perceive through our senses and enlarge this perception into the layers of living beings such as rocks, stones, water, trees. Maybe in this way Earth teaches us something about movement that is happening through us instead of from us.
In contact improvisation, this subtle layer of attention and listening to the wider space beyond our skin, can deepen the way we are present in the dance, so our natural system can remember how to move harmoniously in the system of whole."
